Martin Luther

Today in class we took more notes and we have a test Friday on the Renaissance and thats our big unit before the end of the year exams

The Church is weakened and vulnerable. Here’s why.

SOCIALLY: the Renaissance emphasis on the secular (worldly) and the individual challenged Church authority

The printing press helped spread these ideas
POLITICALLY: Some rulers (especially the Germans) began to challenge the Church’s political power
ECONOMICALLY: northern merchants resented paying church taxes to Rome

What’s so wrong with the Church?

But mostly, indulgences

The selling of indulgences (pardons) “releases a sinner from performing the penalty a priest imposed for sins”
Johann Tetzel was a monk who sold indulgences to help rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral
A monk named Martin Luther objected to this practice

Formative years

Martin Luther was born in Germany in 1483
He studies the trivium - grammar, logic, and rhetoric - and hates it
He attends the University of Erfurt (he calls it a beerhouse and a whorehouse)
After getting his degree, he enrolls in law school (his father’s wish)
He drops out almost immediately
Martin was on his way back to school after a visit home (he was 21)
He was caught in a thunderstorm on horseback, and a lightning bolt almost struck him, knocking him off his horse
Martin freaks out, and a cry for help becomes a vow he cannot break

Monk-y busines

Two weeks later, Martin drops out of law school

Martin Luther gets mad at the Church

Luther thought Tetzel was deceiving people, making them think they could buy their way into heaven (called him “pardon-merchant”)
He came up with 95 objections to the way the Church was “doing business"
We know it as the “95 Theses"

The Church is gonna need aloe for this burn

Luther says the Church needs to be reformeD

“reformed” = “Reformation”
It’s not just about the indulgences… Luther believes:
1.People win salvation by faith in God’s gift of forgiveness.
2.All Church teachings should be clearly based on the words of the Bible.
3.All people with faith are equal. People do not need priests to interpret the Bible for them.

Pushback from the Church

Luther’s ideas are becoming popular, so the Church criticizes him and his ideas
Luther suggests Christians drive the pope from the Church by force!
In 1520, Pope Leo X issues a decree threatening Luther with excommunication unless he takes back his statements
Luther, before a cheering crowd of his Wittenberg students, throws the pope’s decree into a bonfire
Pope Leo X excommunicates Luther

The Holy Roman Emperor gets involved

Monk on the run

Because of his lack of repentance, Luther is declared “an outlaw and a heretic” and he “escapes” from Worms
He is to be arrested on sight
It is a crime for anyone in the empire to give Luther food or shelter
His writings are banned, his books are to be burned
Anyone is permitted to kill Luther without legal consequence
Prince Frederick the Wise of Saxony disobeys this order, puts Luther up for a year in his castle, where Luther translates the New Testament into German

The Birth of Lutherans (and Protestants)

When Luther returned to Wittenberg, many of his ideas/reforms were being put into practice
Some of his followers had formed a separate religious group called Lutherans
But some princes were still loyal to the pope
Other princes who supported Luther signed a protest against the loyalists
Eventually, the term Protestant was applied to Christians who belonged to non-Catholic churches
Catholic is a term meaning “universal” or “whole”

quinns western civ blog